POSTPONED: The future of learning: a celebration in honour of Gunther Kress

This event celebrates the life and work of Professor Gunther Kress (1940-2019) by exploring the future of learning from a social semiotic perspective.

Learning is a central theme in Professor Kress' oeuvre. He used some of his best-known examples to render visible learning that is often taken for granted and beyond the official school curriculum. 

What started as an interest in how young people learn to write, developed into the ambition to work towards an all-encompassing, social semiotic, theory of learning. Gunther was also strongly committed to understanding - in cultural, social, technological, and semiotic terms - changes in what and how we learn. 

His accounts are rich in descriptive detail and explanatory power and politically explicit, and have been taken up widely by teachers and others involved in guiding and assessing learners. In that spirit, this seminar will bring together colleagues who have worked with Gunther and/or are inspired by him in what they do, be it teaching, research, or something else. 

The event will present a collection of examples of learning activity and traces of learning from different settings: homes, schools, universities, and workplaces. Drawing on these case studies, we aim to jointly develop multimodal accounts of learning, explore changing conditions for learning, refine, advance and challenge ‘Kressian’ theory, and debate how to shape the future of learning.

Speakers

• Kate Cowan, UCL Institute of Education (IOE)
• Carey Jewitt, IOE
• Sophia Diamantopoulou, IOE
• Jeff Bezemer, IOE
• Seray Ibrahim, IOE
• John Yandell, IOE
• Andrew Burn, IOE
• Arlene Archer, University of Cape Town
• Theo van Leeuwen, University of Southern Denmark
• Staffan Selander, Stockholm University 
• Rosie Flewitt, Manchester Metropolitan University

Links

• About Gunther Kress
• Department of Culture, Communication and Media
• Centre for Multimodal Research